 And the wealthiest nation this universe has ever seen. I'm going to go out and let them say the universe. We can't afford for everybody to live in a condom. I think it is the universe. I've been out there, I've checked. Hello, my guest today is Solana Rice, who is co-founder and co-executive director of Liberation in a Generation Action. So delighted to have you, Solana. I really want to find out from you what organizers do most successfully. What is it that an organizer, the best organizers do when they go into a community and build relationships around hope? I think the best organizers, for one, are from the communities. I'm always looking for the people who are already in the community and who are trusted and who are influential. There's no substituting trusted brokers. Because, you know, we're not always going to win. And even when we lose, we have made strides forward. And I think that's what's honestly the next step for many of our political parties is to realize, like, those trusted relationships have to be there day in and day out. You know, Mo Mitchell of the Working Families Party, for example, talks about the sand castles that we build during an election cycle, right? We were like, okay, stand up everything. Put up the signs. Put up the spaces. Okay, elections over. Tear it all down. Community organizers don't do that. They're there day in and day out. They're there. And I'm old enough to remember the Alinsky movement. I mean, we ever saw Alinsky was saying, you get into those communities, you build relationships, and you talk about and focus on things that are really important to people. You don't talk about ideology. You don't talk about political parties. You talk about the bread and butter issues. That's right. You know, what is it that people are worried about? And I will say, I find that when we are talking to organizers now, what they are saying is that people in their communities want to be talking about the role of racism. They want to be talking about why these problems exist. When you talk about racism, isn't it the case that a lot of the racism that is being pushed in our society is being pushed because you've got some very powerful forces that want to keep people divided. Don't want people to see where all the power is gone, see where all the money is gone. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, Toni Morrison talks about that racism will no longer be useful when it stops being profitable, when it stops being psychologically useful, and it stops being profitable. And I think that racism keeps us fearful. It is psychologically useful because it says that that's somebody somebody else's to blame for why I'm struggling. It's the fear and it's the othering. Both of them together. So that would also include anti-Semitism. I mean, it's including every of the efforts that are being made to divide us, to make us fearful, to create a kind of a society that is very divided and very angry. Yeah, and we've started to codify this in policies. And I think people are ready to start saying, like, look, we've gone too far. All of us are suffering. And the wealthiest nation this universe has ever seen. I'm going to go out and let them say the universe. We can afford for everybody to live in abundance. I think it is the universe. I've been out there, I've checked. We are the wealthiest society in the universe, and we've never been as wealthy. But do we need, in terms of getting people to come together, do we need a common enemy, a villain? Do we need to say that there is an oligarchy that really wants us to be split apart so we don't basically have the numbers to impose a wealth tax, for example? In other words, how important in getting people together is it to get them to turn against a real force out there that is shafting them? I think it's important to name a villain. I think that's a first step, though. What we are fighting against is the role, the role that these folks hold, right? We are fighting against the assumptions that we have to work in fear, that we don't live in abundance, that everybody doesn't deserve dignity. So it is about naming a villain, but then it's also about understanding and fighting against the assumptions and beliefs that uphold those villainous roles. We've got to educate people about the system in terms of the incentives that are built in, baked into the system that are working against most people. And how would you begin to do that? In other words, what we're doing, you and I right now, is we're trying to drill into the process of educating people to come together. But how do you get people to understand the system's dynamics? I think folks understand the system's dynamics. I think everyday folks might not know about the role of the Federal Reserve Chair, but I don't think that's necessary, actually. Good. I get exactly. Because I was starting to worry. What I think is necessary is that folks that do know the power of the chair start to use our role to help get those folks, regular folks, as policy experts. I mean, you have to admit, the idea that a woman that was a bartender and a waitress is now in our Congress and she's rallying thousands and millions of people, that's exciting, right? Imagine if you and I just knew regular folk that were actually making policy decisions. And that's what liberation in a generation and liberation in a generation action. That's what ignites us, is that the people that are experiencing housing insecurity, the people that are experiencing wage theft and wage loss, they're policy experts. They experience the injustices day in and day out. They know the holes in our economy. They do. They know it's rigged, in a sense. But here's the problem. A Donald Trump or an authoritarian personality like Trump comes in and says, you know, it's rigged. It's rigged against you. I am going to be your voice and I'm going to cut through all of this awfulness. Yeah. And what I'm so excited about is that we are telling people, don't let anybody speak for you. That we are here to broker this relationship. So I'll give you an example. We've been working with the folks at National People's Action. They have a homes guarantee campaign. This campaign generated directly from public housing tenants. They are the ones that know about evictions. They are the ones that know about how housing and urban development runs their public housing. So we are there to broker a relationship between the highest officials at HUD directly with public housing tenants. That's our job, right? And when we empower those folks to walk into those conversations, we don't say, don't worry, we'll handle this. We've got the talking points. You tell your story. No. We say, here are all the policy options. Which ones sound right to you? You present those to the director of HUD. And that's what I'm talking about, is that anybody listening can play that kind of role. I have a confession to make. I was once a cabinet member in the United States government. I ran a big federal agency. And I was in conversations with a lot of people. A lot of people, a lot of average working people, a lot of poor working people. And they were in the same room as me. And they would tell me what they knew. And I would say, yes, you're right. And then what? I had very limited options. How do you break out of that? It's an inside and outside game, right? We can't just go to DC and expect that meeting or even a series of meetings to change. We have to anticipate that we are building power in order to change those dynamics that you're facing as a cabinet secretary, right? On the outside, too. So in other words, I, as a cabinet member, need those people out there to push me. Yes. And give me the power. Exactly. So I can turn to the structures that are making a very difficult movement for me to do anything and say, look, they're pushing me. Yes. Yes. That's right. And that's it. It's really simple. But wait a minute, what's the timeline? How long is it going to take? I mean, what are we actually envisioning in terms of our model for people becoming empowered enough to change the system? 10 years, 20 years, 80 years? In our generation. In our generation, like 20 to 25 years. But do you know what that means? It means that we can't tinker around the edges. We can't say we're going to do small things to the tax code. We're going to do small things to corporate regulation. Like, we don't have time. We don't have time. We don't have time. So you say 25 years. I mean, I'll be 100. I'll wait. But if you guarantee that things are really going to change. Well, that's what I'm also hopeful to is that, you know, there was a lot of talk in this midterms about the younger generations turning out and the reason why we did have some wins and some, and things weren't as bad as we thought was because younger generations turned out. And so I do think it is incumbent upon all of us to equip younger folks with this understanding about systems, about it's not necessarily just the person you're fighting. It's the actual structure that we're fighting. And this balance of like it's not going to happen overnight. We are living in racialized capitalism today. We can have a foot in something different for tomorrow, but we shouldn't just say, uh, it just won't happen. We just, we can't put up our hands. Cynicism is the enemy of real important social change. My grandparents could have never imagined the world that I live in. And so I'm trying to build a world that my son could have never imagined he would live in, right? Or that I would see for him. And it's not about what I'm going to see in my lifetime. It's about what he's going to see, what his kids are going to see. Um, and we have to have a little faith in that. It does, it is like a little sprinkle of faith. We've got to have faith that we're on the right route. Yeah. And it's not for the faint heart. It really isn't. And it's hard. It's a challenge to walk a path towards economic liberation. We've never seen it. We've never seen it in this nation. There's no blueprint, but, uh, it's still a venture worth, worth going on. So a lot of rice. Thank you for your vision, your optimism, your faith and your work. Thanks. Thank you.